


Warlock sees a Therapist

by bethanythemartian



Series: You Can't Cross the Same River Twice [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Gen, Warlock had a Strange Childhood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-09-23
Packaged: 2020-05-15 04:32:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19288198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bethanythemartian/pseuds/bethanythemartian
Summary: Warlock Dowling, not-the-anti-christ, was still heavily influenced by an angel and a demon as a child, and it definitely impacted him, as a person. This is a brief excerpt of a visit to his long-term therapist, a very nice and as yet unnamed lady.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a tumblr prompt, kind of. Link here https://ariaste.tumblr.com/post/185677748794/sometimes-i-just-sit-and-think-about-how

“My parents couldn’t always make the time for me. Well, Mum couldn’t, for a lot of reasons. Dad… didn’t. It was hard to tell the difference from that age, and she made excuses for him, but I understand it now that I’m older.”

The therapist nodded. She wasn’t taking notes, simply leaning back in the comfortable chair across from him, and she was always doing something with her hands. It’s crocheting today, she says she’s making a baby blanket for a friend. Sometimes it was origami, or knitting, sometimes she’d be sewing, and once she was doing some kind of leather work. Braiding something for some reason. 

He’d sat on about every chair and couch in the room before settling on the overstuffed couch. He could sit sideways and not look at her react, or sit up, or whatever. Sometimes he didn’t want to see her face when he said something, and sometimes he  _had_  to. 

“Was there anybody who did?” she asked. Her voice was smooth and soothing. She was paying attention to her work, but also paying attention to him. She said that if she’s writing it makes some people nervous, but if she’s doing something else then the conversation feels more casual, even if it’s not.

Every once in a while, she got this look on her face that he suspected means he said something extremely interesting (or upsetting, or whatever) and was trying not to show it, but it never showed in her voice. He liked that about her. 

He nodded. “When I was younger, we had this nanny. I used to just call her Nanny, I don’t remember if I ever knew her name. She was Scottish. She was real weird, but she’d spend as much time with me as I liked. She was always there, if the gardener wasn’t.”

“A gardener as well?” 

He nodded. “He always had time for me. No matter what. He’d drop whatever he was doing to talk to me. He was from… I don’t remember. Very rural, this fellow.” He thought about it. “I don’t know what happened to them. I think they left to do other things, not too long before my eleventh birthday. I never saw them again. He was kind of boring, sometimes, but he always talked to me like I was the most important person he ever saw.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “Nanny would too, actually. I sometimes think that they’re why I’m, you know, not as fucked up as I could be. That just knowing I could go find the gardener and he’d tell me what the rabbits were doing today, whatever he was doing, that I could tell him about… whatever. Or Nanny. She used to tell me to smite my enemies, I was never sure how to take it.” 

It was just a moment and gone, a single expression of sheer bafflement, which made Warlock laugh a little.

“I know, right? The lullabies she used to sing me were weird too, about death and destruction and ruling the world.”

“Really?” 

“Mmhmm.” 

“That’s extraordinary. Did you ever find out why?”

“You know, the hospital I was born at burnt down, like, the day I was born. Just after my family- well, Mum and me and the secret service people left.” He rolled his eyes. “And Nanny was there from the time I was little. I’ve always wondered if she was a nun from there. If, like, she was out of house and home and needed a job and liked kids anyway- it was a birthing hospital, specifically. They were some rare order of nuns who ran it, and I  _think_  that was the last standing chapter, before it burnt. I don’t remember the name, I’d have to look it up.”

“That’s not an unreasonable jump,” the therapist said, nodding. “Why do you think that, though?”

“There was all this… religious tone, I guess, to the things she’d talk about. The devil and such. And she’d mention ‘the father’ a lot, or ‘my father’ or ‘your father’ but not meaning my dad, like religious people do. Really religious people, who live it like they breathe it, you know what I mean?”

The therapist nodded.

“I always thought- and I’ve never been sure- but that our Gardener was a monk or priest, maybe former, of some sort of…” it took him a minute, thinking to find a good word for it. “Oppositional order. Like he was always calling animals ‘brother and sister’. It was kind of soothing.” He looked down at his hands. “I do it, even still. I’ll think ‘there goes brother squirrel’ or something like that. But he had the same kind of… really religious vibe, in the sense that he lived and breathed it, even though the energy of what they were saying is so different. And if I mentioned something they said ran counter to something the  _other_ had said, they’d go ‘Oh, don’t listen to that nanny of yours’,” he said, quoting the gardener in his best rural accent. “Or, ‘Don’t listen to the gardener, you listen to me, young Warlock.’” He was a little better at Nanny’s accent, probably because he’d heard her sing so much. 

“And you never found out what happened to them?”

He shook his head. “I mean, I think Nanny left because I got old enough that Mum didn’t feel like I needed to be watched every minute. The gardener left at the same time. Maybe they ran away together,” he said, just now thinking of it. “Got married or something. I know as I got older I’d catch them talking, sometimes. Not for long, and they never really fought, like you might think they would. I mean, when I was little I was worried about them running into one another, that they might fight and I think it would have really…” He tried to think of a way to explain how distressing that would have been to his young self. “Been really upsetting. But if opposites attract… I dunno. I get the feeling that they knew each other a lot better than I understood.”

The therapist nodded. “What did you learn from them?”

Warlock thought about it. “Lots of stuff, I guess.”

The therapist raised her eyebrows, in a ‘do go on’ kind of gesture.

He sighed. “I guess, I mean, that I was important. Maybe not to my dad, in the way kids are supposed to be important to their dad, but that there were still people who really cared about me. About what I thought and how my day was and things like that. That maybe it won’t always be the people who I think should care, but that people care. And, like, I get Nanny was paid to take care of me, but she wasn’t paid to  _care_ about me. She was paid to keep me from breaking my arm sliding down the banister and teach me maths. She wasn’t paid to… kiss my scrapes and make them better, or sing me to sleep, or tell me stories about evil triumphing and me being king.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Warlock laughed. “It takes everybody like that, I know. It was kind of- I think it was allegorical. Is that the word?” He shook his head, it didn’t matter. “She had this real  _wicked_  sense of humor, so I learned not to take anything she said like  _that_  too seriously. And it was never  _scary_ , which you might think it would be. It was just kind of funny. Yeah, hell was going to rise up and I was going to lead, go on.” He laughed again.

“Huh,” she said. “But for all her strangeness…”

“Oh yes, she still kissed my scrapes and when she caught me going down the banister taught me how to jump off so I wouldn’t hurt myself, and when I broke into my father’s study and just- I wrecked his office pretty bad,” he admitted. “I had a hammer and just smashed everything I could reach. I had to have been- must have been 8, just after my birthday, which he’d missed.  _Again_.” He sighed. “She caught me and I thought I was going to get a telling off- she had never yelled at me but she could get really mad, she had it out with the maid one time and she had a temper. Or she’d get mum, and then I’d  _really_  be in trouble. But she just- she took the hammer and gave me a quick little hug, she said ‘it’s all right dear, it’s only natural. Go on outside and find the gardener, he just found some kittens’ and gave me a sweet and I never heard anything about it. I guess she fixed everything, I didn’t get in trouble or anything, and next time I was in his office it looked fine.”

“Did you tell the gardener? What you’d done, I mean?”

He shook his head. “No, I just found him and he said ‘I have something for you, young Warlock,’ in that voice that said he was delighted to see me, and then took me to where the cat had her kittens. They were teeny and sleepy and they all started purring and I just laid down next to them and listened to them all purr for a while and I felt a lot better. Might have slept a little. At some point they started climbing all over me, they were very cute. I felt better, after. A bit embarrassed but… better.”

She nodded. “Okay, I have some homework for you.”

He groaned.

She grinned at him. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“What is it?” He was acting put upon but they both knew it was mostly an act.

“What I want you to do is write a letter to each of them. Tell them all- everything you ever thought you wanted to tell them. Just put it in words. Write it all down. I want to know you’ve done it, but I won’t read them, if you don’t want me to.”

He nodded. “Yeah, okay, that sounds good. I can do that.”

“Okay. Well, I think our time is up for today, so try to get at least one of them done before next week, alright?”

He nodded. She stood up and shook his hand, like she always did. He thought it was weirdly formal but it was just how she greeted and said goodbye- a quick, warm handshake and then he was out the door, and in the sun.

Inside, unseen by Warlock, the therapist had dropped her blanket-in-progress and was massaging her temples. “What the fuck?” she mouthed, to herself, where nobody could see. 

Warlock’s visits often prompted such reaction, and she’d just instructed her receptionist to schedule in a fifteen minute break after he left so she could just spend a few minutes dealing with it before her next client. So she had 14 minutes left to stare into space and wonder what the bleeding _fuck_  was going on with this poor man’s childhood. 


	2. Letters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warlock did his homework.

Dear Nanny,

Thinking back on it, there were a lot of odd things in my childhood. You said and did a lot of odd things. I'm not sure what they meant, and how serious you were, even though I never really took you that seriously about ruling and the forces of hell and all that.

Sometimes, when I tell other people, they get strange about it. 

I don't know how to explain to them that it doesn't matter. That the things you said weren't as important as the things you did. You showed me that I was important to someone, that I mattered. That I was more than just some figure of american masculinity, or whatever. I was myself, and that was important. You never told me to put a band-aid on it and stop sniveling about it, you gave me comfort.

I think, I believe, and always have, that you helped save me from becoming a monster. From becoming my father, or even my mother. You and the gardener both gave me a place to go to, and people to care about, who cared about me. 

Mum always refers to you as the help, I guess, and she can't remember your names. I don't know if I knew them. If I did, I forgot them, and I'm sorry.

I miss you. I've always missed you, but things have been hard lately. In some ways better, but still, hard, and I miss you. I hope you're well. I hope you're happy, somewhere. That would be nice to know, that you're well and happy and enjoying yourself, and maybe teaching someone else some very odd lullabies.

I could be satisfied with that.

I've looked and I can't find you, so I guess this letter isn't going anywhere, but maybe if I send it into the world you'll feel it? There's this loopy friend of a friend who says that it works that way, putting energy out there and all that. I don't know if I believe it but I know sometimes I'd like to. Like right now, I'd like to believe that.

I guess I just wanted to tell you. You were there, and that mattered, because it made me feel like I mattered.

I love you, and wish you happiness. 

-Warlock

 

Dear Brother Gardener,

I'm so embarrassed that I can't remember your name. I don't know if I ever knew it.

I still think of you, often, and fondly.

I named my pet rat Sister Rat. I know it's not a real name, my flatmate tells me that, all the time. But it's her name.

I think of you when I feed her, or when I'm outside and see a squirrel, or baby ducklings. The soft things, the natural things, always remind me of you. 

I told my therapist that you were boring sometimes, but I don't think I meant it. Just that sometimes you were soft when the world was hard, and at the time that felt like... dishonesty. Not like lying, but self-deception. Sometimes I couldn't handle it. How can a world contain the softness you projected and the hard reality of a father who never loved his son, but only held him up as some prize that he'd won? Like I was a trophy, not a child. 

I'm old enough to know how radical softness can be. To be soft in a hard world is something you have to work towards, it doesn't come easy, and you were always there. You were always there when I needed someone to be there. You and Nanny.

I know you had philosophical differences, but I always hoped? Dreamed, perhaps? That you had run away together. That there was something that bound you together. I wish it could have been me, when I'm at my most selfish I wish you could have taken me with you. In these dreams there's always some country cottage with a ragged garden, overgrown with everything, and a bike and sometimes a dog, or maybe a cat. 

I dream of the softness of that life, because I see now how important that softness was to me. 

I wish you knew me, now. I wish you could see the impact you had on me. I wish I knew where you were, and I hope wherever it is, it's a place that is happy and soft. That there are squirrels to talk to and rabbits to follow, cats and their kittens. I wish I could remember your name, and really send you a letter. I hope you're alive, still. By my memory you were old, but I am old enough now to know that seeming old to someone as young as I was isn't hard, so I hope you're alive and well and happy. (And perhaps it's a silly dream, you and Nanny being alive and well and happy together, but I think I'm allowed a silly dream, now and again.)

You were right. Every creature, large and small, is important. And you were important. And are, and so am I, and I've always carried that with me.

Much love,

-Warlock

 

Adam listened carefully, waiting. There was no sound in the stair.

Warlock was usually home a little later than this, but sometimes he came home early, and framed the letters as well as he could with his phone. It was good they were more or less short.

He didn't know why he was taking pictures of them, except something was telling him that Crowley and Aziraphale would know about this.

He knew there'd been some confusion about who exactly was the anti-christ, all in all, but he'd never quite gotten the details out of him. But they always asked him lots of questions about his flatmate, and so he had his suspicions. 

Aziraphale did not, of course, have a cell phone. He had a tablet that he could play candy crush on, because Crowley got it for him, so Zira would stop playing Candy Crush on his phone (this did not work) but it only seemed to connect to the internet when he was looking up recipes, and no other time, unless you were borrowing it and asked him why it wasn't connecting to the internet. He had an email address, but sometimes didn't get emails for a year or so, so that was worthless. Crowley was very much so Always Online, however, so Adam knew who he was sending it to.

Anyway, even if they didn't know about this, they might know who to ask. Even if they didn't have their old connections, they'd made quite a few new and interesting ones. 

He sent the images off to Crowley, and carefully put the letters back where he'd found them, and went to find something in the fridge for dinner. Adam's mum had sent up some pie they could reheat pretty easily, and Warlock always loved food that Adam's mum sent along, so he tried to always share. 

He glanced at the desk where he sent the letters, and his phone. He got no response, and hoped he'd done the right thing. Crowley normally responded pretty quickly, but not always, so this wasn't abnormal.

He sighed, and resigned himself to wait. 


End file.
